The ponderings of an eclectic engineer…

Fate, Chaos Theory, Causality and Predicting The Future…

Do you believe in fate? Do you believe that everything is predestined… Or do you believe that everything is random?…

Sir Isaac Newton theorised that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He and other scientists have defined many relationships that explain natural phenomena in the world around us, and, given the right information, an accurate prediction of the outcome of a physical event can usually be formulated. If every aspect of the universe was to the assessed and a formula expressing it devised, is it reasonable to say that given the right information at any point in time you could run that information through the formulas and work out what the physicality of everything would be in the future? Predict earth quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes… They are all natural occurrences that bow to the laws of physics.

Now onto people. People are very bad at being random. Our decisions are based upon the combination of our hard wired drives; survival and replication, and our life experiences. Do you some times find yourself predicting a friends actions or decisions before they know what they’re going to do? If so this is an example of predictability in humans. This is similar in other species. Guess what as cow is likely to be doing: Standing in a field eating grass. The specific grass it’s eating would be down to the state of the grass and the dynamics of the cows herding nature.

If it is possible to predict what an animal may do in one seconds time, with enough experience, then it’s possible to predict what it would do one second after that assuming that your initial prediction is correct. Which, given enough time and information, it should be. Thus this concept can be extended infinitely to predict what it will do for the entirety of it’s life and the animals around it and its offspring from now until the end of animals.

Hypothetically, if you were to watch a person over their entire life do you think you would be able to predict how they would behave in a certain situation? So, if you knew what the situation would be physically around that person from then on, do you think that you, given the time and information required, could work out where they would be in 2, 5, 10 years time?

Assuming that the physical aspects of this world are quantifiable and a formula can be constructed to describe them and that people can be similarly predicted, is it reasonable to say that it may be possible for a person knowing the exact position and conditions of everything in the universe and with enough cognitive power could predict what everything would be like in 1’000’000’000 years from now?

Essentially what I’m saying is that it is very likely that our futures are set already. It is already going to happen. There is no changing it, but l only because you don’t know it.

Knowing your future would allow you to change it because you would know what was intended to happen and you could chose to change it… If only to be awkward and prove that you had control of your life and your destiny…

But… If every physical event and every action of every person is predictable then it would be predictable that that person would receive that information and what choice they would make regarding it, thus, they are still predictable and the future prior to their knowledge was never going to happen.

If you have followed me closely you may have realised the significance of what I’m saying:

Everything is predictable, our futures are set, similar to fate or destiny… BUT… This doesn’t mean that the choices you make are pointless or that they are not choices. It means that the choices have already been made. We are only here to understand why we are going to make those choices.

The nerds among you may recognise the above as similar to what The Oracle says to Neo in The Matrix Reloaded… Isn’t it interesting that a film seen as a science fiction action movie actually has such profound depths… In fact this whole hypothetical situation is analogous to The Matrix in it’s entirety… So next time you watch it, look out for the no so hidden message, pay close attention to The Architects room and all those TV screens and the conversations regarding The Oracle and The Architect… Or just read the wiki…

It’s also interesting how The Architect is analogous to a theistic god. If The Architect is God in The Matrix Analogy, Who is The Oracle?…